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  Elizabeth Joss
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  Gertrude Makhaya
  James Currey
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  Mildred Barya
  M.Mashigoane
  N Ayikwei Parkes
  Nourdin Bejjit
  Obe Mata
  Patrick Iberi
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  P. Makhanya
  Phindiwe Nkosi
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          Credits:
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   Tolu Ogunlesi
   Yomi Ola
   Molara Wood

African Writing Archives


   
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

Night Calls

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

 

That was how it started. They talked about their studies, comparing notes. Then they got personal.

Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons. A routine as fixed as a marriage now.

What you really want is some contentment, some security now, and all you have, though, is this.

 

Arja Salafranca

Arja Salafranca
Austin Kaluba

 

Maria's Vision

Austin Kaluba


Listen you untutored whore
The husband is your lord and protector
Someday, he can give you loving slaps
Don't cry out and wake the neighbourhood.

The boys hovered a bit, trying to prove their manliness. Trying to take over decisions she normally made. As if something told them that having lost her husband, she had lost her senses as well. Like telling the girl that she could stay in one of the small bedrooms in the main house.

 

Identity Theft

Cheluchi
Onyemelukwe

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe
Chuma Nwokolo

 


Terminal Talk

Chuma Nwokolo

I started to pose like a model and soon we were prancing around the car park, the famous international model, dancing and posturing, while the equally famous photographer took shots for a well-known fashion magazine

 

My Brother's Eyes

Cynthia Price

Cynthia Price

Gertrude Makhaya

 

Four Women

Gertrude Makhaya

The woman offered her a quick, sharp, little smile. ‘There’s some really nice marked-down stuff in the basement.’

‘Really? Is that where you shop?’

‘Look, I’m just trying to help you. You have been drifting around all this time.

"Paddy wish for your world," she said softly so only I could hear. And I wished for every one of those seeds to make Silvy love me, love me not Jimmy-Ray. I saw us one day married, and she was as beautiful as ever and we were happy and we were in love. I blew as hard as I could. The cottony seeds flew up like rockets,

 

The Dandelion Wishers

Lauri Kubuitsile

Lauri Kubuitsile
Melissa de Villiers

 

Chameleon House

Melissa de Villiers

London seemed like the best place in the world. So you grew up in a police state that put you in jail? That was way too much information for people here. They got embarrassed if you brought it up, just like nobody cared if your father ass-kissed his colleagues at work and called them kaffirs at home.
After Hester Muponda lost her first child and she turned her face to the heavens to pour out her grief, her church people said to her, find your strength in God, they said to her. After the second child followed where the first had led, she bent her face into the folds of her Zambia wrapping cloth.

 

The Lament of Hester Muponda

Petina Gappah

Petina Gappah
Phindiwe Nkosi

 

Erode

Phindiwe Nkosi

Erode; a process of weakening in the authentic present. It’s rusting beyond oxidation as flickers of dominant spectrums palpitate. The wear away of wholeness, the disintegration of a unified artwork into a segmented jig-saw puzzle of realities.

 

That was the work of a very experienced waitress. Her eyes lingered briefly, haltingly, over his and he thought he caught a look he knew in them. A look of loneliness,

 

In This Hope

Sachdeva Gaya

Sachdeva Gaya

 
   
               
             
               
   
   
   
         
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